11.1.4 Using keyboard commands

A full description of the keyboard commands available in the Editor is beyond the scope of this manual, and you are advised to study the
Editor User Guide
to gain a full appreciation of the capabilities of the Editor. However, of necessity, certain basic keyboard commands are discussed in this chapter. See Basic Editor commands of this manual for a brief introduction to some of the most important ones. The menu commands available are described throughout the rest of this chapter.

As with other keyboard commands used in the environment, the keyboard commands used in the Editor are invoked by using a combination of the modifier keys
Control,
Shift,
Escape,
Alt and
Command
(not all of these are available on each platform), in conjunction with ordinary keys. Some of the commands available perform the same, or a similar task as a menu command.

Each keyboard command in the editor is actually a shortcut for an
extended editor command
. You can invoke any extended command by typing its command name in full, preceded by the keyboard command
Alt+X
. Thus, to invoke the extended command
Visit Tags File
, type
Alt+X visit tags file
followed by
Return
. Case is not significant in these commands, and tab completion (described in The echo area) may be used to avoid the need to type long command names out in full. This method is often useful if you are not certain what the keyboard shortcut is, and there are many extended commands which do not have keyboard shortcuts at all.

Many of the keyboard commands described in this chapter and in the
Editor User Guide
also work in the Listener. Feel free to experiment in the Listener with any of the keyboard commands that are described.